Among parts of the human body, the knees tend to have orthopedic troubles most often, due to declines with age of muscles and ligaments that support the knees, injuries to the knees in sports, etc.
Recently, care of injuries to the knees and protection of the knees have been carried out by applying a taping treatment or a corset to a part of the human body that requires the same, occasionally.
However, the taping treatment is difficult to carry out for oneself, and it is necessary to ask the others, specifically the specialists, to conduct the same since the taping treatment requires skills that are not available from inexperienced persons. Therefore, it involves inconvenience in application and removal. Besides, long-period application of the same should be avoided, since it could cause skin disorders. Furthermore, the taping treatment fixes the knee joint, thereby decreasing the degree of freedom of the movement of the knee joint. On the other hand, in the case where a corset is employed, the degree of freedom of the movement of the knee joint likewise decreases significantly, since a corset does not provide sufficient freedom to the patella.
Recently, various garments that support specific muscles have been proposed (JP 4(1922)-343868 A, JP 4(1992)-57902 A, JP 4(1992)-50302 A, JP 8(1996)-81807 A, JP 9(1997)-241906 A, JP 10(1998)-280209 A, etc.).
Such garments having muscle-supporting functions are generally provided with stretchable portions having relatively great straining forces at positions over or beside muscles to be supported.
However, these garments having muscle-supporting functions are designed not particularly from the viewpoint of the protection of the knees.
As to the human body, even taking a standing position causes the knees to warp. More specifically, a force causing the legs to bend convexly with the medial side of each knee joint being a vertex is applied to the legs, thereby applying more tension to the ligamentum collateralle of each knee joint on the medial side thereof (the ligamentum collateralle on the medial side is hereinafter referred to as ligamentum collateralle medialis). The ligamentum collateralle medialis is covered with tendons on inferior sides of the musculus sartorius, the musculus semitendinosus, the musculus semimembraneous, and the musculus gracilis, thereby being protected. However, if these muscles fatigue or become weaken with age, it is impossible to resist against the foregoing force with only the ligaments, and hence, the knees are made unstable.
Meanwhile, few studies have been made on garments for supporting the ligamentum collateralle medialis of the knee joint of the human body. Statistics, however, show that there are considerably many cases of disorders to the ligamentum collateralle medialis of the knee joint, among the disorders of the knee joint. Therefore, it has been found that, with a view to providing sufficient support to the knees while securing the freedom of the movement of the knees, studies should be focused on the ligamentum collateralle medialis.
The ligamentum collateralle medialis is located at a position slightly posterior to the medial side of each knee joint, extending between the vicinity of an inferior end of the os femoris and the vicinity of a superior end of the tibia. On the lateral side of the knee joint, opposite to the ligamentum collateralle medialis, the ligamentum collateralle lateralis is located, extending between the vicinity of the inferior end of the os femoris and the vicinity of a superior a end of the fibra. It should be noted, however, that cases of disorders of the ligamentum collateralle lateralis are significantly less than cases of disorders of the ligamentum collateralle medialis; namely, cases of disorder of the ligamentum collateralle medialis are many. This is because that the ligamentum collateralle medialis has a small tensile strength as compared with that of the ligamentum collateralle lateralis, and hence, exhibits a small degree of extension before fracture. In other words, the ligamentum collateralle medialis is inferior to the ligamentum collateralle lateralis in strength and elasticity.
As described above, the ligamentum collateralle medialis is covered with tendons on inferior sides of the musculus sartorius, the musculus semitendinosus, the musculus semimembraneous, and the musculus gracilis, and is located at a position slightly posterior to the medial side of the knee joint. Therefore, there has been no muscle support garment that is focused on and actually intended to provide the support of the ligamentum collateralle medialis.
The inventors of the present invention made studies centering on the support of the ligamentum collateralle medialis and aimed to providing a leg support garment that is capable of effectively protecting the knees and stably maintaining the knee joints without decreasing the degree of freedom of the movement of the knee joints, that provides a good feeling when worn, and that is useful for preventing and reducing gonalgia caused by the instability of the knees, and further, for preventing injuries to the ligamentum collateralle medialis caused by sports or the like.